The next Composer Spotlight for the Biennial 2020 NASA conference at Arizona State University features MCI composer Kevin Day! Day will be having TWO premieres of new works at this weekend's conference, both of which will be taking place on Sunday, March 8.

​The first of these premieres is a new work titled More than words..., composed for saxophone octet, double bass, piano, and narrator. The piece was commissioned by Dr. Connie Frigo, Associate Professor of Saxophone at the University of Georgia-Athens for the UGA Saxophone Studio. This group will premiere the piece at 3:20pm in Katzin Concert Hall - Day will be performing with them on piano for this event.
The composer writes the following: "These are my observations as a young American, and as a young citizen of the world."

The second premiere is for the first movement of a new sonata for alto saxophone and piano titled Unquiet Waters. The piece was commissioned by Dr. Jordan VanHemert, Assistant Professor of Saxophone and Jazz Studies at Hope College, who will give the world premiere of the entire work later this year. The first movement, fast, turbulent, was selected as the winner of the 2020 NASA Composition Competition and will be premiered by Dr. Nicki Roman (Assistant Professor of Saxophone, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Casey Dierlam Tse at 7:30pm in Katzin Concert Hall.

Be sure to attend both of these events if you will be at the conference!!

The next Composer Spotlight for the upcoming Biennial 2020 NASA Conference at Arizona State University features the music of MCI composer Josh Trentadue. Last year, Trentadue was commissioned to write a new work for tenor saxophone and piano that would be meant to showcase a variety of the instrument's capabilities. Trentadue writes the following program notes about his new piece titled Excursions:

"​Excursions is a fun and mostly light-hearted work which showcases the idiomatic, technical, and lyrical capabilities of the tenor saxophone. The piece is inspired by the variety of different landscapes that comprise the geography of the United States. Embarking on a musical road trip of sorts, each of the relatively short four movements (all of which are played without pause) conjures up imagery of a particular geographical landscape. The tenor saxophone begins predominantly within a state of introversion while the piano starts to lead this journey. However, throughout the piece, the tenor saxophone continues to emerge in a necessary and important role equal to the piano as the piano gradually transitions to a more accompanimental role.

The four movements which comprise this work are as follows:

I. Twilit Woods - a beautiful setting of a forest at night bathed in moonlight. There is a sense of magic and mystery ever present.
II. Jagged Peaks - roads that twist and turn in every direction through sharp mountains and steep canyons. Unpredictable rhythms and tall harmonies give way to lyrical passages that search for the route leading away from this chaos.
III. Verdant Meadows - a majestic view of the mountains and canyons left behind leads into a pastoral depicting the peace, tranquility, and celebration of rural fields and green pastures.
IV. Ocean Coastlines - an adventurous trip on the shores of the ocean at its stormiest times. The vibrant thrills of the sea are matched with unpredictable and dangerous hazards of weather and nature at full force.

My sincerest thanks and appreciation to Ben MacDonald and Matthew Hartson for commissioning this piece and granting me the opportunity to write this music for them."

Excursions will be available for purchase after its world premiere by Ben MacDonald (tenor saxophone) and Casey Dierlam Tse (piano) on Monday, March 9 at 10:20am in Katzin Concert Hall. You can hear a preview of the piece below.

EVENT INFO: https://www.saxophonealliance.org/conference-presenters.asp?action=view&ProposalID=1
PIECE INFO: ​https://www.joshtrentadue.com/excursions-2020-tenor-saxpno.html

Our next Composer Spotlight for the upcoming Biennial 2020 NASA Conference features the music of MCI composer Harrison J. Collins. Last year, Collins composed a new work for saxophone ensemble that is inspired by the nighttime wonders of the cities he has lived in and visited. The composer writes the following program notes about Electric City:

"​Electric City is, first and foremost, inspired by the colorful, glowing, metropolitan beauty of the big city at night. For me, this city is Dallas, Texas, a place that is quite close to my hometown and that I have seen and been to frequently. I am always in awe of both the visually pleasing colors of the night city as well as the powerful sense of vitality and life, and as I am frequently in Dallas to hear concerts performed by the Dallas Winds, I have grown to have a strong musical association with this night-life aesthetic. When Dr. Paul Nolen, the saxophone professor at Illinois State University, asked me to compose a work for the ISU Saxophone Studio, I had been particularly missing my home, and so I chose to act on my yearning and write Electric City as an ode to the beauty of Dallas at night.

Musically, the work is informed by both classical and non-classical music that I listen to, and particularly by one of my favorite songs, M83’s “Midnight City”. Inspired by the vividly descriptive lyrics of that song, Electric City can be heard as joyride through a big city that passes through sparkling lights and reflective skyscrapers in the dark of night, accelerating until a final gear shift sends us blazing into the darkness with the glow of the city behind us."


Electric City is now available to purchase through Murphy Music Press and will receive its world premiere during this year's NASA conference by the Illinois State University Saxophone Ensemble on Saturday, March 7th at 10:40am in Nelson Fine Arts Center Plaza. You can hear a preview audio realization of the piece below.

EVENT INFO: https://www.saxophonealliance.org/conference-presenters.asp?action=view&ProposalID=529
PIECE INFO: https://harrisonjcollins.squarespace.com/electric-city
PURCHASE: http://murphymusicpress.com/products/c-176

From March 6-9, the Biennial NASA 2020 Conference will be taking place at Arizona State University. We are excited to begin sharing with you the Composer Spotlights for our MCI members who will be represented during this conference.

Learn more about Conner Leigh Shaw's piece "ExoResonant" for alto saxophone and electronics below! This piece will be premiered by Daniel Phipps on Sunday, March 8 at 10:20am in Ravenscroft.

EVENT INFO: https://www.saxophonealliance.org/conference-presenters.asp?action=view&ProposalID=424

The final Composer Spotlight for our appearance at this year's Midwest Clinic conference features MCI composer Kevin Day! Kevin's work for wind ensemble, Havana, will be performed by the Clements High School Symphonic Band as part of their concert on Friday, December 20 from 6:15pm-7:15pm in Skyline Ballroom W375AB.
In addition, an arrangement of Day's chart Windy City (arranged for big band by MCI composer Josh Trentadue) will be featured during the Jazz New Music Reading Session on Friday, December 20 from 10:30am-11:30am at Ballroom W196.

VIEW OUR COMPOSER SPOTLIGHT FOR JOSH TRENTADUE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HIS ARRANGEMENT OF WINDY CITY

Be sure to check out this performance and the other events featuring music written by our MCI composers! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

​
The composer writes the following about Havana:

"Havana was a wind ensemble piece that I started working on in 2017, got about 30 measures into writing, and then put on the shelf. I couldn't think of what to do with it or come up with an idea, so I ended up just putting it aside until I could. I ended up forgetting about it and while I was searching through my music files one night in September 2018, I stumbled on this work and found inspiration to write on what I had. I wanted to tell a story with the piece and make it authentic, and so I spent a lot of time carefully writing the work. After messing with a few titles and feeling a good amount of frustration, I decided to go with Havana, despite there being a viral pop song already in existence with the same name (a song that is honestly a guilty pleasure of mine to listen to). This piece, however, has nothing to do with the Camilla Cabrello mega-hit.

Havana (For Wind Ensemble) is a 7.5-minute work that is heavily influenced by Cuban music, rhythms, and percussion. I wanted to highlight different dance genres such as the Salsa, Mambo, and Cha-Cha, while also making the piece in my own voice. I have a strong love for Latin music and so this was incredibly fun to write. I sought to paint a mental image of the city of Havana, this beautiful landscape, and the culture that it is known and beloved for. There are many "Latin-influenced" pieces for band already and so I wanted to make Havana stand out as one that is exciting and memorable. I hope that performers and audiences will tap their foot, bop their heads, and feel the music."

--program notes by the composer

Havana is published through Murphy Music Press and can be purchased here. We look forward to hearing the Clements HS Symphonic Band's performance of this work!

The next Composer Spotlight for the 2019 Midwest Clinic conference features MCI composer Chris Evan Hass! His piece Volcanic Ash (2017) will be performed by the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet as part of their concert, scheduled to take place on Friday, December 20 from 12-1pm at Ballroom W190. Be sure to check out this performance and the other events featuring music written by our MCI composers! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

The composer writes the following about the piece (program notes taken from his website):

"Volcanic Ash is a boisterous and lively piece for saxophone quartet, fusing the harmonic language of Middle Eastern music with the form, rhythms, and overall intensity found in heavy metal. The piece features constant meter changes, low open fifth ‘power chords’, and sweeping arpeggios, but is complemented by a calm and reflective chorale.
Volcanic Ash was written for Donald Sinta Quartet’s Composition Competition in 2017, taking Dan Graser’s advice of writing a quartet that is 'harder, faster, and louder' than my first saxophone quartet, Polar Vortex, in an attempt to challenge the incredibly talented ensemble."

Volcanic Ash is published through Murphy Music Press and can be purchased here. We look forward to hearing the Donald Sinta Quartet's performance of this work!

We are excited to share with you the recordings from our collaborative concert with Front Porch! This event (titled "Six Climate Visions") featured the premieres of new music written by five of our MCI composers - Duncan Petersen-Jones, Eddie Jonathan Garcia Borbon, Isaac Mayhew, Ali Balighi, and Conner Leigh Shaw. Front Porch is, from their website, "a mixed quartet that invites audiences to engage personally with music by passionate, youthful voices, reimagining the classical concert experience with warmth and love as its foundation. Feeling equally at home with opera singers, composers, folk artists, and everyone in between, Front Porch is committed to exploring the expressive possibilities of its uncommon configuration of violin, bassoon, piano, and percussion."

​Check out the recordings below! This post will be updated as more of them are published.

VIDEOS:

Starting today, we will be highlighting the 2019 Midwest Clinic events featuring music written by our MCI composers! If you are attending the conference this year, be sure to check out each of these performances! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

First up is a new work for concert band by MCI composer JaRod Hall. Hall's composition Lost Woods Fantasy (2019) will be performed by the Berkner High School Symphonic Band I as part of their concert, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, December 18, from 3-4pm in Skyline Ballroom W375AB.


Lost Woods Fantasy is published through FJH Music, who writes the following:

"This unique work follows a young group of friends in search of adventure in a nearby forest late at night. Once inside, the trees around them begin to stretch and seal off the entrance. Trapped inside, they must find a way out..."

-FJH Music

​We are looking forward to hearing the Berkner High School Symphonic Band's performance of Lost Woods Fantasy next week!

Our final Composer Spotlight for our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Eddie Jonathan Garcia Borbon. The concert is TONIGHT at 8pm EST at McIntosh Theatre, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI - you can livestream this special event here: https://smtd.umich.edu/performances-events/live-stream-mcintosh/?fbclid=IwAR08hnAtD2f8jes2yj31PZLYSX_e0Bl6l74vdnVRIlSFJQyxsCFTMXLDszA

Each of the five composers who will be featured in this event were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. Borbon's piece addresses the presence of air pollution in Colombia:

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The inspiration for this work was the air pollution present in Bogotá - Colombia. According to the analyzes carried out by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, air pollution in Colombia is one of the environmental problems of greatest concern for Colombians. This is due to the impacts it generates in both health and the environment, and it is also the third factor social cost generator after water pollution and natural disasters.

In accordance with the provisions of Title 5 of Decree 1076 of 2015 and adjusting the definition, Atmospheric Pollution is "the phenomenon of accumulation or concentration of pollutants, understood as physical phenomena or substances or elements in solid, liquid or gaseous state, causing adverse effects on the environment, renewable natural resources and human health that alone, or in combination, or as reaction products, are emitted into the air as a result of human activities, natural causes, or a combination of these."

The MinAmbiente establishes with Resolution 610 of 2010 the maximum permissible levels of the following criteria pollutants: Particulate Material (PM10 and PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), tropospheric ozone (O3) and monoxide of carbon (CO), as well as the maximum permissible levels for six (6) unconventional pollutants with carcinogenic effects.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Colombia is the second country in Latin America with more air pollution, with an average of 19,000 deaths annually throughout the territory. Bogotá, the capital, records a value of 15 PM2.5 of exposure (amount of tuxedo it produces). The pollution of the air that is in the environment is produced by different factors that affect the atmospheric layer, increasing the great variety of polluting sources that modify the natural layer and all the components that are in it.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
This is an abstract work which deals with the harmful effects of air pollution in Colombia.

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
I wanted to use in every instrument of this unique ensemble some of their extended techniques, and from there, explore the relationships created with these techniques in a manner that ties into the overall theme of this work.

Is there anything specific about your piece you'd like your audience to look out for?
The importance of fighting for the environment, and specifically against air pollution

The next Composer Spotlight of our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Ali Balighi. Balighi's piece Daramad brings to life traditional Persian music, including a popular traditional song.

The composer writes the following:
​

"Daramad" in Persian means the starting of music, the moment when every performer would be ready to play. This music is made by a member of a traditional group and it describes the mode of concerts in traditional styles; however, nowadays neither traditional musicians nor younger players use this form in their current repertoires.

My piece Daramad was composed according to an old Persian music Be Soye To. This song is a famous piece which was written by Majid Vafadar in Dashti mode. Simple structure, melody, harmony, and the profound atmosphere this song creates inspired me to write my piece in a manner different from my usual practices. I believe that form, as an important aspect of music, is truly made during the compositional process. Form is also an abstract concept that should be created from a new perspective in every contemporary piece. Moreover, the use of older and traditional materials is a good way to describe new scenes. Audiences who have some understanding of these aspects of music and composition can follow these new ideas when used in a new piece.

Composing for a new ensemble which I do not have enough experience writing for was my biggest challenge. However, Front Porch, as a professional ensemble, helped me to search for new and artistically fulfilling ways of self-expression.
All in all, for this piece will be played in the United States, I hope that Daramad will increase its audience's interest in Persian culture.

The next Composer Spotlight of our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Isaac Mayhew. Each of the five composers who will be featured in this event were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. Mayhew's piece Elegy for Uncommon Ground addresses the presence of climate change and its impact in the state of Minnesota:

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The idea for that piece is to capture the experience of living through climate change on an everyday level. I live in Minnesota, in the center of the continent, where I'm not faced with the tangible effects on a day-to-day basis in the way that people elsewhere are. This is not to say that there aren't very real consequences to be felt. However, since we are talking about such a macro-concept, it can be hard to feel on a daily level - except for on social media, where there is still a raging debate about it.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
I was reading an online article about the ways in which my home state will feel the effects of climate change over the next thirty years, when I discovered the comments section. For this piece, each movement title is a Facebook comment, and within each movement, I tried to capture the both the tone and feeling behind the comment itself as well as my own experience of reading it.

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
​I wanted to capture the frustration of having a debate over widely greed upon facts and realities. I also wanted to mock the willful ignorance of climate change deniers.

What are some of the challenges you faced in writing the work?
​As I was writing the piece I found myself incorporating a lot of seemingly unrelated musical elements, and was having a hard time making them fit together. In the end, I decided to leave the piece a little rough around the edges because I think that gives it character and also works as an analogy for the chaos of our social media feeds.

Is there anything specific about your piece you'd like your audience to look out for?
​The second movement has some interesting things to listen for. I wanted to poke fun at the sort of "Baby Boomer Nostalgia" that I see as a major impediment to taking real action on climate change. The two main themes in this movement appear in the following places:

• Beginning to Letter A (pulled from the song La Bamba by Los Lobos)
• Letter B to Letter C (no quote in particular, but it supposed to sound like the music from Grease)

Both of these strike me as really nostalgic "Baby Boomer" music. Both sections are in 7/8 so that while the melodic and harmonic material make it really tempting to just sit back in the groove, the rhythmic framework repeatedly upsets that. The two themes are also interrupted by more serious, moody material. This is meant to portray the nostalgia that I was just describing as a way of avoiding the darker truth about what is really happening to the planet. From D to the end, the idea is that the moody "in-between" material takes over and is developed to its natural conclusion.

What do you hope your audience ultimately take away the most from hearing your work?
I would hope that listeners would be able to laugh at the humor in the piece but also make connections between the piece and their own lives. Despite this being about climate change specifically happening in Minnesota, this is a greater issue happening globally.

For you, as a composer, what has been the most beneficial and rewarding part of your collaborative process with Front Porch?
Front Porch is an exciting and upcoming music ensemble and it is an honor to have the opportunity to write for them. They have a very unique instrumentation that presents many possibilities. 

We are excited to begin sharing with you the Composer Spotlights for our collaborative concert with Front Porch! This event will be taking place on December 11, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and will feature world premieres of new music written by 5 of our MCI composers.

For this concert, each of the composers were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. MCI composer Conner Leigh Shaw's piece B00m and Bust addresses the issue of fracking at the height of the oil and gas industry within his home state of Colorado.

​Learn more about Conner's new piece below:

We are excited to share with you the recordings from our recent collaborative concert with the Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra! This event featured the premieres of new music written by four of our MCI composers - Janay Maisano, Chris Evan Hass, Kevin Day, and Josh Trentadue. The Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra was co-founded by another of our MCI composers, Jordan VanHemert, in 2018. From their website, this ensemble was formed "to increase access to quality jazz performances and jazz education experiences across the lakeshore [Michigan] area."

​Check out the recordings below!

VIDEOS:

Janay Maisano, "Birdy Banter" (2019)

Chris Evan Hass, "Scatterbrain" (2019)

Kevin Day, "Windy City" (2017/rev. 2019)

Josh Trentadue, "Four Ethereal Planes" (2019)

AUDIO ONLY:

The next Composer Spotlight for our October 20th collaborative concert with the Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra features MCI composer Josh Trentadue and his new suite "Four Ethereal Planes." This piece will feature fellow MCI composer Kevin Day joining HCJO as guest artist on piano, keyboard synthesizer, and Hammond Organ.

Learn more about Trentadue's new work in the video below. A full transcript for this Spotlight (and MCI composer Janay Maisano's Spotlight) will be published in the coming weeks.

TICKETS: ​https://www.eventbrite.com/e/millennium-composers-initiative-concert-tickets-74454235623

We are excited to share with you the first Composer Spotlight for our October 20th collaborative concert with the Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra! Learn more about MCI composer Janay Maisano's work for this group entitled "Birdy Banter" in the video below. A full transcript for this Spotlight (and for MCI composer Josh Trentadue's Spotlight) will be published in the coming weeks.

TICKETS: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/millennium-composers-initiative-concert-tickets-74454235623